Politics this week

General Keith Alexander, the head of America’s National Security Agency, defended the intelligence services’ data-mining operations, saying they had disrupted dozens of terror plots. Earlier, Edward Snowden (right), a whistleblower, had leaked classified details about the data harvested by the spooks from websites operated by the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google. Barack Obama annoyed Europeans when he said surveillance was mostly directed at foreigners. Amid calls for his prosecution, Mr Snowden surfaced in Hong Kong and vowed to fight any attempt to extradite him. See article

The first summit between Barack Obama and Xi Jinping went well. In a relaxed setting at a secluded estate in California, the American and Chinese presidents discussed North Korea and various cyber issues, among other things. No agreements were announced, but the tone was cordial.

An immigration reform bill cleared an important hurdle when America’s Senate voted to start debating it. Senators hope to pass their version of a bill before the summer recess, though it could still be rejected.

Drug thoughts

The foreign ministers of the Organisation of American States agreed to “encourage the consideration of new approaches to the world drug problem in the Americas”, which some countries take to include legalisation of marijuana. But they also asserted the importance of fully implementing the prohibitionist UN conventions on drugs.

Peru’s president, Ollanta Humala, rejected a request to pardon Alberto Fujimori, the country’s former ruler who is serving a 25-year sentence for abuse of power. Mr Fujimori’s family say he is in poor health, but he is “not terminally ill”, declared Mr Humala. See article

Venezuela’s election authority said that an audit of the result of the presidential election in April confirmed that Nicolás Maduro, the chosen candidate of the late Hugo Chávez, had won by 1.5 percentage points. The opposition complained that the audit was meaningless because it failed to review the voting lists and thus could not detect multiple voting. See article

Kinross Gold, a Canadian mining company, scrapped its development of a $1 billion gold-and-silver mine in Ecuador, because of high taxes. The left-wing government of Rafael Correa is considering a cut to the royalties it levies on miners.

A big test for the euro zone

Germany’s constitutional court held a hearing about the legality of the European Central Bank’s bond-buying programme. The German plaintiffs in the case argued that the programme violated the central bank’s mandate: in their view it is supposed to make only monetary policy but buying government bonds amounts to financing states and is thus a fiscal matter. The court will probably issue its decision after the German election in September. See article

Turkish police charged into Istanbul’s Taksim Square on foot and in water-cannon vehicles to remove demonstrators who had been camping out for 14 days. Demonstrators in Gezi Park refused to give up and the streets around it resembled a battlefield. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, warned that he would not show “any more tolerance” for protests, though he also suggested the development plans for the area that sparked the trouble might be put to a referendum. See article

Russia passed a federal law against what it described as gay “propaganda”. The law, which was approved in the Duma’s lower house, forbids the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relations” and reflects the prevalent culture of homophobia fuelled by the state-controlled media and the Orthodox church. Russian gays are frequently victims of violence. They fear that they will now be stripped of a public voice as well. See article

Rome’s mayoral election was won by Ignazio Marino for the centre-left. The outgoing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, belongs to the centre-right party headed by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s controversial former prime minister.

The wild, wild east

The main Islamist militia in Benghazi, the capital of eastern Libya, was chased out of its base after a shoot-out that left 35 people dead. The government in Tripoli pledged to assert control at last over the country’s militias, which have been a law unto themselves. See article

In the run-up to the first round of Iran’s presidential poll due on June 14th, a reformist candidate, Muhammad Reza Aref, dropped out to make way for Hassan Rohani, who has emerged as the leading reformist. Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel did the same for the conservatives. Their leading candidate is thought to be Saeed Jalili. See article

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of al-Qaeda, was said to have ruled against a previously announced merger of its Iraqi ally with Jabhat al-Nusra, an extreme Islamist group in Syria which has become prominent in the rebellion against Bashar Assad’s regime.

Two rebel suicide-bombers blew themselves up in Damascus, the Syrian capital, killing at least 16 people, including themselves. See article

Ghana arrested 55 West African foreigners, mostly from Niger for mining for gold without a licence. A week earlier it did the same to more than 200 Chinese citizens.

Moody about Modi

L.K. Advani, a veteran Hindu-nationalist politician in India, resigned from the Bharatiya Janata Party, though he backtracked and rejoined after just one day. He was reportedly upset over the appointment of Narendra Modi (right), the chief minister of Gujarat, as head of the BJP’s 2014 election campaign, which edges him closer to being the party’s candidate for prime minister. See article

General Joseph Dunford, the American commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, said that talks with the Taliban would be essential to secure peace after international forces leave next year.

China launched its fifth manned space mission. Three astronauts took off from a launching pad in the Gobi desert and will spend two weeks orbiting the Earth. See article

A Japanese man died at the age of 116. Jiroemon Kimura is on record as being the oldest-ever man. He is reported to have had seven children, 14 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren, and 13 great-great-grandchildren. He died of natural causes.